For a team taking their first tentative steps into the Champions League quarter-finals there was not a great deal of jubilation inside Manchester City’s stadium. Their work had been done in the Olimpiyskiy three weeks earlier and the lingering image will be the passage of play early on that culminated with Vincent Kompany limping off and an unhappy piece of deja vu that threatens serious repercussions for the remainder of their season.

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Otherwise it was a stress-free night for City, protecting a 3-1 lead from the first leg in Kiev and facing a plodding, unadventurous side who seemed unaware their opponents can be susceptible against teams that attack with pace and movement.

Manuel Pellegrini was entitled to praise his team but a better gauge of their ability will come if they are drawn against one of the tournament favourites because they certainly got lucky being paired against a side with Dynamo’s limitations.

The draw takes place on Friday and in the meantime City will await the latest prognosis on Kompany’s fitness and what will plainly be another lengthy spell of rehabilitation.

Kompany’s injuries have become a recurring theme and his latest one came only five minutes into the evening before he had even a single scuff on his kit. He will be missing for at least a month and it is probably understandable if the crowd went home reflecting on a bittersweet occasion because, without wishing to be melodramatic, there have to be serious concerns about whether Kompany will ever get out of this demoralising cycle.

Perhaps an argument could be made that Pellegrini has asked too much of his captain recently – this being his sixth start in 20 days – and did not have to risk him when City had such a commanding first-leg lead. Yet the bottom line is that Kompany, approaching his 30th birthday, is too susceptible and City’s supporters have become wearily accustomed to those seemingly innocuous moments when he stretches for the ball, feels the flash of tell-tale pain, then his hand goes up and his expression darkens.

It is his 14th injury of this nature since he joined the club in 2008. In three separate spells this season he has missed four and a half months, including two seven-week lay-offs when he managed only nine minutes in between before the same problem flared up again. When a man is this fragile it is difficult to imagine him playing a significant part in City’s remaining games.

As if that were not galling enough for City, Nicolás Otamendi was also injured in the first half and has to be a doubt for the Manchester derby on Sunday. In little over a quarter of an hour City had lost both centre-halves and, with Eliaquim Mangala and Martin Demichelis on the pitch, they were fortunate their opponents did not seem to understand that, if they attacked with more adventure, they might get some joy.

Kompany has had accident-prone spells and Otamendi’s flaws have been conspicuous far too often this season but the presence of Mangala and Demichelis can be unnerving for City’s crowd given the frequency of their mistakes. Dynamo really ought to have done more to examine this part of the opposition defence.

Against that backdrop it was a strange mood inside the stadium, with little sense that the occasion should be remembered with any real fondness. At one point in the first half Yaya Touré became embroiled in an argument with Joe Hart, apparently because of a misdirected goal-kick.

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City’s commercial staff had branded it “Breakthrough Night” but the ground was not full and many supporters have clearly become weary of Jesús Navas’s inability to have a greater influence. When one attack broke down because Navas had overhit a simple pass to the overlapping Sergio Agüero there was an exasperated response from the crowd.

Dynamo were moderate opponents but, apart from some driving runs from Touré, City seemed caught in two minds about whether they should protect their lead or play their normal, attack-minded game. It is a common problem for teams who have won the away leg first and it was unusual to see them create so little.

David Silva contributed one of the outstanding moments with a little drag-back to take out two opponents but the Spaniard was unusually subdued. The same applied to Agüero and it was understandable if the crowd wanted more from Navas even if, to give him his due, he provided one moment of fleeting excitement by cracking a shot against a post.

An hour had passed at that stage and Hart, for the most part, was untroubled until a late flurry when Dynamo threatened a stoppage-time goal that would largely have been an irrelevance. Sergei Rebrov’s side had plenty of the ball but there has been only one occasion in the history of the European Cup when a team has lost 3-1 at home in the first leg and still gone through. That was Ajax in 1969, at the expense of Benfica, but that side had Johan Cruyff driving them forward. Dynamo were a different proposition altogether and City will know there are tougher assignments to come.